When Paul Howey's ecommerce startup started to pick up steam to the point of where he needed to start handling phone orders and service issues, Paul had very little options to choose aside from Google Voice which lacked in features. Luckily his brother was involved in telephony and had the technical knowledge to offset Paul's entrepreneurship background. Together they spent 6 months building Talkroute while they bootstrapped the business and survived on client consulting. Much of what Paul has done today to achieve 50,000 users is by simply listening and testing. When Talk Route first started, the only initial service it offered was VOIP so Paul took notes on what customers wanted and evolved Talkroute into what it is today, which is an affordable phone system for startups and entrepreneurs. Although in his mid 20s with over 50,000 customers that bring in $75,000 per month, Paul isn't satisfied and has created a goal of 150,000 customers.